If you visit Erddig House near Wrexham, North Wales, you don’t enter by the front door, into a grand and stately hallway, and your tour won’t begin with a glimpse at the lives of the Yorkes, owners and resident squires for more than two centuries. No, instead you start in the servants’ quarters, winding through the ‘downstairs’ rooms and peeping into the scullery, the servants’ hall and housekeeper’s room – and fittingly, really, since no country house could function, no wealthy family could host their shooting weekends and summer garden parties, without a team of servants working hard behind the scenes.
“Dependent on the size of the house, or indeed wealth of the family, some estates employed hundreds of people, working both inside and outside of the house,” explains National…
